Questions

There are times when I feel like an alien.

The trouble boils down to this: I fundamentally do not understand how the rest of humanity thinks. Things that I would take no offense at seem to offend the rest of you … things that I would find funny do not amuse you … things that I would find touching don’t seem to impress you … things that I find horrifying seem to be amusing to some, unremarkable to others …

I don’t get it. I probably never will.

There’s a guy who works across the street: big, loud, claims to be a Christian, claims that I’m not one – fairly typical good ole boy, born and raised in Oxford, MS. I passed a room that was echoing with his loud mouth, yesterday … he was telling some sort of story … I paused to listen, and caught the gist of it: a stray cat had gotten into his vegetable garden, and he’d driven it off by slashing it with a fucking weed-eater!

And his audience all laughed.

They all hunt, and tell stories of deer running terrified through the woods with multiple gunshot wounds. And they laugh. They heard about the Newtown shooting, and expressed no concern for the children who were killed – only that Obama would take away their assault rifles. Right about this point in the conversation, someone will make a racial slur, someone else will add a muslim slur, and someone else will start talking about how God won’t put up with the Government for very much longer …

People who purport to be Christians – people who blame others for not being Christian enough – embracing hate in all its forms, when Christ’s principal message was “Love one another” … people ready to rattle off misquote after misquote after misquote of the Bible to justify hatred, ignorance, cruelty, bigotry …

Where did they get these quotes? Did they misread the Bible, or were they spoon-fed it by heretical pastors? Both, it seems: I hear about entire hate-filled sermons based on misquotes … I hear people boasting they were studying one book or another of the Bible when they came across something that perfectly fits their bigotry – but only if you chop it up, massage it with some new words, and take it out of context!

Yet they consider themselves paragons of a church that teaches ALL have fallen short …